Tuesday, April 28, 2015

How to scale product development when you no longer fit in one room

How to scale product development when you no longer fit in one room

When growing a startup product development you encounter major challenges: How do you scale your product development teams? How do you keep as fast and responsive as you used to be? And how do you leverage the existing knowledge? In this talk I’ll show a couple of practices and rituals based around a Kanban board which captured our whole product development efforts with about 30 participants. I’ll show the design of the Kanban board, the policies and meetings around it and the personal duties ranging from a developer to a product manager up to the CEO. I will also compare it to other approaches from the community and what our lessons learned are.

Slides from the talk at the Jax: https://jax.de/2015/sessions/how-do-product-development-when-you-no-longer-fit-one-room
Published in: Software, Leadership & Management, Engineering


Transcript

  • 1. Matthias Lübken The product guy
 @luebken How to scale product development when you no longer fit in one room
  • 2. About me • Software Developer • Agile Coach • Director of software 
 development • The product guy • Herding cats
  • 3. Microservice Infrastructure based on Docker. Visit http://giantswarm.io
  • 4. What is your context?
  • 5. Our setting • Company: A startup with product / market fit. • Process: Just do whatever works, and if you get stuck, ask someone in the room.
  • 6. Our challenge • Scale product development • 1 4 teams. • 7 30 colleagues.
  • 7. Our (implicit) vision “No process is a good process “It’s about the people and their interactions
  • 8. Topics • Cross functional teams
 + Devops • Adaptive product roadmap • Feedback in dev teams • Continuous improvement • Other ideas Your questions!
  • 9. (Cross) functional teams
  • 10. Devel-
 opment Product Platform Adserver
  • 11. Feature Team Devel-
 opment Product Feature Team Feature Team
  • 12. Feature Team Devel-
 opment Product Feature Team Feature Team Functional Team
  • 13. Feature Team Devel-
 opment Product Feature Team Feature Team Functional Team Goal A Goal B Goal C
  • 14. Feature Team Devel-
 opment Product Feature Team Feature Team Functional Team Community of practice
  • 15. Lessons learned • Slicing is hard • Restructuring is painful • Clear goal is crucial
  • 16. DevOps
  • 17. You build it. You run it.
  • 18. Feature Team Devel-
 opment Product Feature Team Feature Team DevOps
  • 19. DevOps team • Created in the dev teams • Lots to learn and understand • Extracted into functional team • Rotating 2nd level support in teams
 rotating participation in the DevOps team
  • 20. Containers make you feel cozy
  • 21. Lessons learned • Special challenges require specialists
  • 22. Adaptive product roadmap
  • 23. Our Kanban Board
  • 24. Product Jour Fixe CPO Developer POs CEO/CTO Architect Other Agile Coach
  • 25. Sprint Reviews
  • 26. Lessons learned • High discipline needed • Be prepared for hard questions
  • 27. Feedback in dev teams
  • 28. Pairing vs PeerReview vs PullRequests
  • 29. Standup vs DoneThis-Emails
  • 30. Lessons learned • Be open to new ideas • Coach teams
  • 31. <meta>   </meta> Continuous improvement
  • 32. If you do one thing in your process do retrospectives.“
  • 33. Small and big retrospectives
  • 34. Authority boards see mangement30.com
  • 35. Lessons learned • Optimise locally and globally • Take the time needed • Be a good pace maker • Make authority clear
  • 36. Other ideas
  • 37. No Blueprints • Blue Prints like SAFe don’t work • They are against all our instincts “Dave Snowden Put brutally SAFe seemed to be PRINCE II camouflaged in Agile language. ... SAFe is not only a betrayal of the promise offered by AGILE but is a massive retrograde step giving the managerial class an excuse to avoid any significant change.
  • 38. Agile Scaling Cycle • Based principles and working Agile teams
 • "Autonomous business facing teams taking ownership of their process.” @StefanRoock
 • http://scaledprinciples.org
  • 39. Jimdo • Created culture manual • Feel good manager • Weekly Teamverløtung • Goal #1 • Open Prio Meetings > acknowledge mistakes > have fun > strive for the best > ok to be crazy > no deadlines http://bit.ly/jimdostory
  • 40. •Pick practices that fit •Challenge yourself •Do collaborative change •Know your runway Take aways
  • 41. Matthias Lübken The product guy
 @luebkenQuestions? Microservice Infrastructure based on Docker. Visit http://giantswarm.io
  • 42. It’s hard but fun!
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